The Present Application is related in subject matter to and cross-referenced with both U.S. Pat. application Ser. No. 08/560,777 (entitled Method and Apparatus for Pre-Creeping A Greater Than Required Strength Blade Device) which application is attributable to the same Applicants as the Present Application, and both of which applications were filed on the same day as the Present Application.
This invention relates to flexible force applying blade devices, and more particularly to a force applying blade exhibiting a reduced creep rate, and that is usable as a relatively more precise and effective image transfer assist blade in an electrostatographic reproduction machine.
Generally, the process of electrostatographic reproduction includes uniformly charging an image frame of a moving image bearing member, or photoreceptor, to a substantially uniform potential, and imagewise discharging it or imagewise exposing it to light reflected from an original image being reproduced. The result is an electrostatically formed latent image on the image frame of the image bearing member. For multiple original images, several such frames are similarly imaged. The latent image so formed on each frame is developed by bringing a charged developer material into contact therewith. Two-component and single-component developer materials are commonly used. A typical two-component developer material comprises magnetic carrier particles, also known as "carrier beads," having fusable charged toner particles adhering triboelectrically thereto. A single component developer material typically comprises charged toner particles only.
In either case, the fusable charged toner particles when brought into contact with each latent image, are attracted to such latent image, thus forming a toner image on the image bearing member. The toner image is subsequently transferred at an image transfer station of the machine to an image receiver copy sheet. The copy sheet is then passed through a fuser apparatus where the toner image is heated and permanently fused to the copy sheet to form a hard copy of each of the original images.
In some electrostatographic reproduction machines, it is well known to use a curved or bent single layer blade device for applying a force to the backside of the copy sheet in order to assist image transfer from an image bearing member to the copy sheet. A conventional single layer force applying transfer assist blade as such unfortunately has a relatively short life in the reproduction machine due to its creep or nonrecoverable plastic deformation rate, and hence must be replaced frequently in order to prevent image deletions or transfer failures.